In praise of … the pint

There is a glass-half-full take on the government's blurry vision of beer being served in continental measures. Brits have an unfortunate tendency to pour strong foreign lagers – Stella, even Leffe – into a pint jar for which they were not intended, and to get poisonously pie-eyed in the process. But the solution is not to change the measure, it is to change the drink. The UK has a distinctive, venerable and varied tapestry of quality session ales, which can quite reasonably be slowly supped in decent quantities. Dismissed as red tape by minister David Willetts, the three centuries of legislation that have imposed the pint pot and the half upon pubs have served a valuable purpose. The knowledge that punters can compare price on a like-for-like basis keeps proprietors on their toes. Even as the average pint breaches £3, the mark-up is dwarfed by that on soft drinks, where each establishment chooses the measure. If you doubt the difference, order a pint of Coke – it costs almost the same even though landlords get it virtually free and there is no excise to pay. Grumbling about price is part of pub culture, but the pint has a wider cultural currency too. The very word is pleasing, and amid the great grey of 1984 an old man hankering for a pint – "a 'alf litre ain't enough ... a 'ole litre's too much" – is a link to a more human past. Yes Minister's Jim Hacker rose to be an unlikely PM after rallying to save the British sausage from bureaucratic assault. There is now an opening for a political knight to ride to the rescue of the pint.